The Legend of Hillrock Heights
by Rokhal
Summary: Fentanyl is a cheap and potent opioid drug, used by illicit drug distributors and counterfeiters to enhance the user's experience of their products. Make the slightest dosing error, or fail to blend the mix exactly, and the user can easily die from the distributor's carelessness. Tonight, these distributors will meet the Ghost Rider. Takes place during Vengeance Drives For Uber


**Notes:** Warning for graphic depictions of violence.

* * *

Fentanyl is the Swiss Army knife of adulterants.

A hundred times more potent than morphine and fifty times more potent than heroin, synthetic fentanyl can be shipped from China to Los Angeles through the mail, arriving as a carefully wrapped brick of fantastically lethal white powder. A few tenths of a milligram, about the same weight as a grain of table salt, will put even the most hardened heroin junkie on the nod. Added to poor quality weed, it restores mellowness. Added to crack or methamphetamine, it keeps the user a touch more level, a touch more pleased with the product, and significantly more likely to come back. Fentanyl is cheap. As side effects go, what you see is what you get; it is not carcinogenic, caustic, or psychosis-inducing; it is only an opioid—an unusually potent one. And short-acting. A junkie whose fix has worn off prematurely is a junkie who needs to buy twice in the same night, and that's good for business.

Tonight, fentanyl was Fern's business. Fern was a crook; he'd grown up a crook in Brooklyn, moved to East L.A. in the late '90s to escape a warrant, and got himself a wife and two brothers-in-law and a circle of friends who could pronounce and remember his real name. He liked to have two or more businesses at a time. Fermin Ramirez was a CPA, working around the clock for big paychecks all tax season. Fern was a consultant. He bypassed security systems, mapped Customs checkpoints, designed secret compartments for vehicles, translated Spanish, Polish, Cantonese, and a little Russian, crunched numbers, and, like tonight, played compounding pharmacist and quality control inspector to Vanessa Tolentino's counterfeit pill mill.

Entering the mixing room was a process. The crew of four worked all through the dead of night in a boarded-up furniture store, mixing powdered cellulose and calcium carbonate with fentanyl and crushed horse-aspirins in a rotary drum. Every time they finished a mixer cycle and opened the drum, powder wafted into the air and settled on every flat surface. Rats and mice that wandered into the empty store promptly OD'd, sometimes right out in the middle of the room. The mixing crew wore respirators and disposable plastic jumpsuits, like meth cooks, and everyone took a snort of Narcodan before entering the building and again before going home to shower. Every hour an alarm went off, to remind them to take a break and check each-other's pupils.

Each mixed batch of powder was poured into an industrial pill stamper, an eight-hundred-pound device the size of a refrigerator, whose serial numbers had been filed off. The stamper turned the powder into neat greenish-white tablets that closely resembled Oxycontin.

Fern was not required to be on site every milling night, thank god. The Narcodan, the jumpsuits, they were all his idea, and they seemed to work, but he had nightmares about, say, stepping in fentanyl and then going home and his grand-nephew licking it off the bottom of his shoe. Or a dust of fentanyl powder falling into his glove, getting caked under his fingernail before he picked his nose. Or the Narcodan wearing off later that night, and some fentanyl that had dissolved in the sweat on the back of his neck kicking in and shutting his lungs down in his sleep. But no one else had seemed to have problems so far.

Ms. Tolentino, to his knowledge, had never visited the pill mill. She had Fern to ensure the product was properly made, and Mr. Bean to handle human resources and physical security. Matt Bean was a head shorter than Fern, but he made up for it with the AR-15 he slung over his back, crinkling his plastic coveralls. Tomas and Levi operated the mixer and the mill, Mr. Bean kept them honest and packaged the tablets for shipment, Marshall the kid perched on the roof as a lookout, and Fern had just dropped in at three in the morning for a surprise inspection.

"They're doing it just like you said, man," Mr. Bean assured him from the packing table. He was surrounded by small cardboard boxes and preprinted shipping labels. Ms. Tolentino hated to have stock lying around, and her operation was practically mill-on-demand. Every tablet they made here tonight would be mailed to secondary distributors as soon as the FedEx depot opened.

"I don't tell you how to do your job," Fern replied. That was probably rude. Whatever. After twenty years, he was still a New Yorker, and he was in a hurry. He wanted out of this damn milling room with its pile of dead rodents, wanted to peel out of his protective gear and take a decontamination shower and go back to sleep with his wife. He checked the alignment on the pill stamper. Checked the pressure settings. Confirmed that the fifty gallon plastic drums contained the correct cellulose powder for filler, that they were grinding the horse-aspirin to powder fineness, that they were keeping the fentanyl tightly sealed between uses, and that each bin of powder still had its own correctly sized scoop attached by an elastic cord. Check, check, and check.

Except the pills were coming out white, not green.

"Why aren't you guys using the indicator powder?" Fern demanded, opening the little box of green pigment. They had plenty.

"Ms. Tolentino says her end distributors have a hard time selling it," Mr. Bean explained, as he weighed, bagged, and boxed up pills a thousand at a time. "Says the color's too suspicious."

"Well, get a different color!" Fern exclaimed, appalled. "It don't have to be green. It can be fluorescent, glow in the dark shit for all I care, but you need some kinda indicator. A mixer is just a mechanical device, it turns off whether the product's evenly combined or not." He checked the mixer settings. "Figures. You changed my timing." He turned to Tomas and Levi. "You changed my timing. Cambiaron mi temporazacion."

"Boss lady wants ninety-two orders made up tonight. That's over five hundred pounds of product, Fern. The mixer's too slow. We'd be here past daylight, or we'd have to break into two milling nights, and it's not worth the risk."

"You stopped adding the indicator pigment because the pills were coming out streaky, didn't you. Malditos." Fern scrubbed his palms over his hair. "Fuck. I'll tell Tolentino. I'm washing my hands of this."

"Tell her what?" Mr. Bean growled, gripping the strap of his rifle.

"Tell her that the manufacturing process I developed for her doesn't speed up," Fern said. "Tell her she either needs to stick to the plan, buy a second mixer, or plan for unhappy customers. Fuck. Matt, tell me. As a personal favor—my son-in-law uses. Can you make sure that none of the pills made after you stooges fucked up my mixer settings goes to the LA distributors? Por favor?"

"These are all heading east," Mr. Bean said.

"_Thank-you._" Fern sighed. "Jesus. This is why I insist on surprise inspections. Holy hell."

Mr. Bean's phone went off. Fern watched in alarm as he pulled the phone from his pocket through a hole cut in the hip of his coverall and took his glove off to unlock it and check an encrypted messaging app. Mr. Bean frowned. "Cordero," he called. Levi turned from the pill press, where he had been staring at the dials and gauges while trying to turn invisible. "Come look at this."

From out on the roof, Marshall had sent a photo. It was dark and grainy where a streetlight had gone out, zoomed out as far as the camera allowed to capture a big black sedan, a vintage number with a shiny chrome blower rising from the hood. A lot of the gang-bangers drove cars like that. The Los Angeles climate was kinder to the steel than wetter areas where salt and rain rusted them through, and street racing was popular in the lawless neighborhoods. Fern's first thought was "rival gang enforcer."

Levi looked down at the phone and grimaced.

"That look like La Leyenda's car to you?" Mr. Bean asked.

Levi shrugged. "No se."

"So it could be."

"Wait a minute," Fern cut in. "Leyenda, he's the local cape, right? Half a' why I left New York was all the fuckin' capes."

"La Leyenda doesn't wear a cape," Mr. Bean said. "I don't think it's him." He texted Marshall back. "We're gonna sit tight, tell Tolentino, have Marshall see if he can catch the plates. Then whoever this is, gonna wake up to my face and a dozen uglier staring down at him in his bedroom. And if he comes in here, he's a dead man if this dust don't kill him first."

"La Leyenda operates out here? We know how he works, what he wants?"

Matt shrugged. Levi turned back to the pill stamper, which did its job just fine without a stoner staring at it.

Fern cursed to himself. He contemplated pulling out his own phone, getting dust on it, searching for news articles. He wasn't a cape fan. They didn't play by any kind of normal rules, and they were all different. Didn't do much good to know their favorite colors and modus operandi until they were on top of you.

Mr. Bean's phone beeped again. Another text from Marshall.

-GTFO

Bean pocketed the phone, unslung his rifle.

"What's it say?" Levi asked nervously.

"Says we got orders to fill. Sit tight."

"Hey, I don't like firefights," Fern said. "Inspection's over."

"You stay right there," Mr. Bean snarled, pointing the rifle at Fern's crotch. "You open that door, you'll draw his attention—"

An engine rumbled to life outside, loud despite the boards over all the windows. A deep bass chug, and a sickly-sounding whistle from the blower. The engine revved, and the whistle rose to a ghastly steel scream.

Tomas bolted for the door. Bean shot at him; missed, but Tomas dropped flat to the floor with his hands over his head. "Sit tight!" he barked, but the whites of his eyes shone all the way around, and Fern saw a man paralyzed by panic, stuck in one plan like a robot.

"C'mon, Matt," Fern argued, hands low and palms out. "Say we leave the product, come back another night. What's the worst that could happen? Think about it. But that's not too likely, right, nothing's ever the absolute worst that can happen. How about what's the third worst thing that can happen, though? You might be able to live with that, maybe—"

The car roared louder, tires shrieked on the pavement. Fern flattened himself to the floor like Tomas. A big black sedan crashed right through the wall, upsetting a drum of powdered cellulose which dusted into the air. Then the air exploded.

It was the cellulose that did it, Fern figured. Just like the dust in a grain mill, tiny floating particles of flammable material were just as explosive as gasoline vapors. The shock wave thumped Fern's body, boomed against his eardrums, and rushed right out the hole in the wall into the night. The ceiling was blackened, the air was hot and stale.

Fern rolled slowly onto his back.

The sedan retreated, easing its way out through the rubble of the storefront, engine vibrating so hard the chunks of glass and cinderblock danced their way right off its hood, fire and sparks sputtering up from the tires and blower. As it withdrew, a human figure emerged where the car had been, walking right out through the bumper.

It walked right up to the pill stamper and heaved it half-way across the room. Then it turned on Mr. Bean. Soaked up a whole clip of rifle bullets, lunged at him, lifted him high overhead by his gun arm. Mangled his right hand and his trigger-guard together with a sharp squeeze.

Fern crabwalked backward, biting his tongue to keep quiet. What he hadn't put together from the news stories was that La Leyenda was a goddamn Ghost Rider. Spidey sent you to prison. Punisher sent you to your grave. But Ghost Rider sent you to the nuthouse, or the street corner, babbling out your guilt for the world to hear for the rest of your miserable life. Brooklyn's Ghost Rider had done that to his uncle. Left him a living wreck, who couldn't hurt a fly. Literally.

Ghost Riders didn't stop for bullets. They didn't stop for anything, not money, not pleading; they served their own unearthly agenda. This Ghost Rider looked little like the nightmare Fern remembered from Brooklyn. No studs, no biker leathers, this one wore a black and white drag-racing jumpsuit. And the skull was all chromed steel in the front, black in the back, like a helmet built from parts of the car, except for bare human teeth clenched in metal jaws. Fire and sparks spat between them, and through the eyesockets, and through each vent and plate and gap in its head. Its voice, when it roared in Bean's face, was that same rumbling-shrill _hiyrrrrrrr_ that thundered from the car.

La Leyenda snapped Mr. Bean's left elbow, and his jaw, and kneed him in the hip. Bean's bent rifle dangled from the remains of his right hand, tangled around the tendons of his trigger finger. Every time he touched Bean there was a scream or a sickening crack or a spatter of blood. Tomas and Levi were creeping closer to the door, and the way Leyenda was working Bean over, savoring it, leaving no limb unbroken, Fern thought they might make it. But as Tomas sat up and reached for the doorknob, that whole door and wall imploded into the room. The car was back. Leyenda tossed Mr. Bean aside like a used-up apple core. The car ploughed Tomas and Levi right up to Leyenda's feet, and Leyenda sunk one hand right through the hood and pulled out a great coil of steel chain that rippled out endlessly as though lifted out of water. La Leyenda whipped the chains overhead, their arc somehow swinging free in the closed space, and as Levi and Tomas scrambled to their feet and took off for the hole in the wall, the chains snapped forward and coiled round and round, bound them and dropped them, screaming.

Fern inched along the wall, around the corner, listening to the thud of fists and crack of bones as Leyenda went to work on the others, beating them, shaking them, throwing them against the mixer. He scooted toward the rear bumper of the car, where the wall caved in, steeling himself against the heat of the flames that shot from every tire because the car itself gave him visual cover; he would sneak around it and run away, adrenaline carrying him faster than he had run in twenty years. He felt the cool night air on the back of his neck, the cracks in the cinderblocks behind him. He was coming around the back bumper.

The car reversed suddenly and backed onto his left hand.

Fern screamed. The heat was astonishing. He couldn't feel his hand under the burning tire at all, and the plastic jumpsuit melted and shrunk against the skin of his forearm, agony. He couldn't pull free. Did he even have a hand anymore? He tugged like a trapped animal. He couldn't see the between the tires, not through the heat haze and the smoke; he looked up to see La Leyenda staring down at him, wading through the car, outlined in ripples of glowing steel as its limbs emerged. It gripped him under the armpits like a child, and lifted. Somehow his hand pulled free. Through the tire.

He could see the bones on the back of his palm. He would never be able to open that hand again, if he even kept it.

Fern was no connoisseur of beatings, but this, the tempo, fist to ribs, knee to femur, tossing him and snatching him up again, this had the frenetic passion of a small child trying and failing not to crunch down on a lolipop. Delighted with every stroke, unable to make it last. Its strength was terrible. Tricks that would have broken a human's thumb left Fern still trapped in its grip. La Leyenda swung him up by his arm, kicked him high in the chest, sent him crashing against the concrete wall. He blacked out for an instant, came to on the floor. He tried to crawl, tried to get his feet under him. A boot landed on his back, the tread of it smooth, thin, for racing. To better feel the pedals of the car. Thin enough he could feel the heat of the demon inside sear through his shirt. Flexible enough that he could feel the toes tap against his spine.

Hot leathery hands lifted him again, snugged his back tight against the Ghost Rider's chest. And here Fern began to doubt what he knew about this monster, because the Ghost Rider's most fearsome weapon was to burn the soul. To stare deep into its prey's eyes and spool out their own personal hell. But La Leyenda turned him to face the unbroken front window, where the dark boards outside turned the interior glass into a great dim mirror. La Leyenda pinned his unbroken leg between its thighs, gripped his head by a fistful of hair, nuzzled his ear with its steel jaw, raising blisters from the heat. And in its other hand, it had a knife. This knife, it pressed point-up against the bottom of Fern's jaw, under his tongue, between the bones. And slowly, slowly, holding his head so he could not look away from his own death, it raised the knife until blood spilled inside Fern's mouth, until the tip pressed the roof of his mouth, until he swallowed reflexively and almost cut his tongue in two. Another three inches and it would be in his brainstem, death as sure as any bullet. And it wanted him to watch.

It froze.

La Leyenda's steel skull had no expression but greater or lesser intensity of its flames, but the tension of its body changed, it shook its head and sprayed Fern's face with sparks, and it yanked the knife out and dropped him. Fern curled around himself, sobbing, letting the blood pool from his mouth. La Leyenda stooped and picked something up off the floor, Bean's phone, still unlocked. It dialed something, hissed, tossed the phone against the whimpering forms of Tomas and Levi. The car moved again, backed over the machines and barrels and pills a few times, then drove right through La Leyenda. It melted into the car like two water drops merging and reappeared behind the wheel, filling the cabin with flame as it drove away.

Minutes later, Fern heard sirens.

Blocks away, as patrol cars surrounded the furniture store and summoned the fire department and a small fleet of ambulances, a big black car with a chrome supercharger pulled to a stop in an alley. At the wheel was a young man in a black and white leather jacket, leather driving gloves, jeans and sneakers. He was sweating, pale. He stared at the cinderblock wall ahead of him for a long moment, eyes squinting and flickering, jaw clenching, a silent argument with himself.

"That was enough," he said at last.

Argument concluded, he put the car in reverse and drove off. In his rear-view mirror, smoke rose above the shops and warehouses that lined the streets, lit from below by flashing emergency lights.

* * *

**Notes:** The Ghost Rider Fern was remembering from Brooklyn was '90s Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch/Noble Kale. OG Ghost Rider of my HEART. The origin of the Penance Stare power and the Spikes All Over The Place Aesthetic, which properly never belonged to Johnny Blaze/Zarathos but osmosed onto them through later comics and the movie.

Noble Kale, the spirit possessing Danny Ketch who ran around frying junkies' brains with their own sins and swinging his chain at helicopters and roaring about Vengeance for the Blood of the Innocent, he was a good guy. He meant well. He was confused, and he'd been dead for too many centuries to understand humans anymore, but he really believed in justice and innocence and he tried to do right by his host.

Eli Morrow, the spirit possessing Robbie Reyes, is not a good guy.


End file.
